AI News 2026-01-05
AI Daily Brief
Summary
AI glasses included in national subsidies for the first time, with consumers eligible for up to 15% discount, aimed at lowering the adoption barrier and boosting industry development. Beijing's AI industry aims to exceed one trillion yuan within two years, with accelerated deployment in frontier sectors like embodied intelligence. Microsoft CEO urges users to stop using the term "slop," arguing AI has become part of humanity's new normal.
Today’s AI News
AI glasses included in national subsidies for the first time, smart wearables receive policy boost: China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and Ministry of Finance jointly announced that AI glasses are now included in the national consumer subsidy pilot program, marking the first time such frontier smart hardware has been included in a national-level subsidy system. Starting Q1 2026, consumers purchasing qualifying AI glasses can receive subsidies of up to 15%, capped at 800 yuan per unit. First-batch approved brands include Huawei and Xiaomi, with products required to have real-time interaction and visual assistance AI capabilities and pass certification. The policy aims to lower adoption barriers, accelerate technology popularization, and drive industry chain development. Industry data shows Chinese AI glasses shipments grew 112% year-over-year in 2025, with 2026 expected to exceed 2 million units. This policy is expected to further stimulate the market and guide companies to increase R&D investment in optical display and edge computing technologies.
2026 Beijing AI Summit held, aiming for industry scale to exceed one trillion yuan within two years: The Beijing AI Innovation Highland Construction Promotion Conference was held today, releasing the “Beijing AI Innovation Highland Construction Action Plan.” The plan proposes Beijing will implement “Nine Major Actions” to achieve AI core industry scale exceeding one trillion yuan within two years. Data shows Beijing’s AI core industry scale is expected to reach 450 billion yuan by end of 2025, with over 2,500 companies, both figures accounting for about 50% of the national total. Beijing has become the cradle of top domestic AI enterprises, leading the nation in capital, corporate strength, and consumer-level applications (such as Doubao’s MAU exceeding 172 million). The action plan shows Beijing will accelerate deployment in frontier sectors like embodied intelligence and scientific intelligence, building a complete industry chain from chips and models to end products.
Microsoft CEO urges users to stop using the term “slop”: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently posted an annual summary on LinkedIn, urging people to stop using the term “slop.” The word was named Merriam-Webster’s 2025 Word of the Year, referring specifically to low-quality digital content generated by AI. Nadella believes people should move beyond debates about content quality and accept that artificial intelligence has become part of humanity’s new normal. He stated that humanity has the knowledge to harness the growing capabilities of AI models and can derive value in the real world. Meanwhile, Microsoft users have expressed dissatisfaction with the company’s force-pushed AI products, with many eligible devices still running older Windows versions. Nadella’s remarks reflect his concern about users who refuse to accept the new AI normal.
Meta Llama “fraud” scandal: Yann LeCun reveals Zuckerberg’s new AI strategy: Former Meta AI head Yann LeCun revealed in an interview that the company engaged in “fraud” while developing the large language model Llama 4, and criticized current Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang as young and inexperienced. LeCun recounted his early connections with Zuckerberg and conditions for joining Meta, but later faced communication breakdowns as the company shifted strategy toward AI and metaverse, leading to poor Llama series performance and allegations of benchmark manipulation. Feeling research constraints and disappointed with company direction, he resigned to start a new company focused on “world model” research.
Musk announces new Grok version, global users exceed 30 million: Musk announced on social platform X that the new version (1.3.28) of his AI app Grok has launched, with monthly active users exceeding 30 million. The new version introduces the “Grok Imagine” feature that can convert old photos into videos. The app has topped App Store rankings in multiple countries, showing strong market performance and user acceptance, marking the increasingly widespread application of AI technology in daily life.
Beijing’s version of DeepSeek: 40B parameter model breaks AI boundaries, runs on just a 3090 GPU!: Chinese quantitative company Jiukun Investment has open-sourced its AI large model series IQuest-Coder-V1, which includes 7B, 14B, and 40B parameter versions. The 40B version achieved a score of 81.4% on the SWE-Bench Verified leaderboard. The model employs a unique “code flow multi-stage training” strategy and supports running on a single consumer-grade 3090 or 4090 GPU, significantly lowering the barrier to use and demonstrating China’s important progress in the AI code generation field.